One Year Ago Today

One year ago today my day started out like so many others. I got up, went to work and was going about the normal business of a school day. Sometime mid-morning my cell phone rang. Caller ID indicated it was Tami. My heart skipped a beat. Tami never calls me at work unless it's an emergency... and I mean NEVER. I answered nervously. Through her tears she told me Michael had been at school but was now in an ambulance on his way to the hospital. He had shortness of breath, chest pains and low blood pressure. I'm no doctor and my mind immediately started thinking heart attack (or at the very least heart related issues). I remember thinking... He's only 17... It can't be a heart attack. Can it??? I also remember praying immediately. For his health and safety. For God to not take him from us... he's only 17! Under stress and having only a smidgen of information, your mind plays a lot of tricks on you. Thinking clearly is not generally what happens. As it turned out (as I'm sure most of you know), it wasn't anything heart related at all. It was a Spontaneous Pneumo-thorax. That would be a collapsed lung to us non-medical folks. But still... A collapsed lung? How in the world can a young, strong, healthy boy have a collapsed lung? You can imagine the questions whizzing around my head. The explanation was actually quite simple. Tall, thin teenage boys are susceptible to collapsed lungs. Who knew? Being neither tall nor thin as a teenager (or now) I never knew this could happen. To make a long story a little shorter, his lung collapsed twice more in the next six weeks resulting in surgery last June to repair what was called a bleb. A bleb is a weak spot on the lung that bursts (much like a bubble in gum). Since his surgery late last June, he's had no further issues with the lung. The doctor said he couldn't guarantee other problems wouldn't occur with the same lung (or the other lung either). Praise the Lord for seeing Michael through that difficult time in his life (and ours). Praise the Lord for continued good health for my son. I pray he never has to go through that again. He was such a trooper. For all the time he spent in a hospital bed last summer, he never complained once! Thank you Lord for a good year since Michael's collapsed lung. This is NOT a photo of Michael, but this is exactly what he looked like last summer. If you're a parent, you can imagine how hard it would be to see your child like this.